Platner is in my office? BUCK PLATNER IS IN MY OFFICE?!?” I ask myself over and over hoping that I misunderstood Hope completely; each time the question becomes more frantic. My lungs sting and my head feels like it’s in a beehive as I thunder up the metal stairs. Once on the office floor, I try (fail) to catch my breath as I make my way to my office. I can see the outline of Buck’s blond, buzzcut head through the glass wall and all attempts at composure are lost. From here he looks exactly like he did standing on my parents’ front porch waiting to pin a corsage on me, and I feel the same nausea.
I slip into the office and close my glass door quickly behind me. Neither Buck nor the person he has brought with him realizes I have entered the room. They are staring at the television monitor, which is tuned to the direct stage-feed channel.
“What are you doing here?!?” I gasp as my chest rises and falls. No hellos, no niceties…I have to get Buck and whoever this other person is out of here immediately.
“Lizzie—Elizabeth,” Buck says, scrambling to his feet as quickly as he can, clearly caught off guard by my entrance. The girl, who looks around sixteen, stares up at me. She looks vaguely familiar and I wonder if she is a fellow Victory loser who is Buck’s assistant or maybe even an intern, since she looks so young. Probably his girlfriend, I think, feeling disgusted.
“Hi,” she says quietly, but it’s clear that under normal circumstances she is a confident girl.
I ignore her greeting and again look at Buck. “Well?” I ask tapping my foot with impatience.
“Lizzie, you look great,” Buck says crossing my small office in two steps. “We saw you on the TV,” he says, motioning at the small Panasonic. I see that Renee is back on her cream sofa with Halle Berry’s dog sitting on her lap while the Oscar winner smiles from a floral chair strategically positioned to look the way the furniture in your living room might be arranged while ensuring that every celebrity’s “good side” is clearly visible to the three large cameras that roll back and forth across the stage floor.
“Shit,” I say, “I’ve gotta get back down there,” knowing that if that show cuts to commercial and I’m not there to answer any stupid question Renee has about anything in the world that it will get ugly. “What are you doing here?”
Buck looks slightly puzzled for a beat before turning back toward the teenage girl and saying quietly yet firmly, “This is Tiffany.”
“Tiffany?” I peek around Buck’s lineman frame for a second glance at the girl. Now I know why she looks familiar. She looks like Charla—or more specifically, like a prettier version of the Charla that I vaguely remember from high school.
“Hi,” she says again, adding a little wave and losing what little confidence she had in her first greeting.
I straighten my body and look up, directly into Buck’s blue eyes. “I cannot do this now,” I tell him through a clenched jaw, then I hold my breath and wait for him to bulldoze me.
Instead, he says—no asks, “We could come to your house tonight?” sounding as nervous as a high school nerd inviting a cheerleader on a date.
“Perfect,” I say, relieved that this means they will be leaving my office now. “Hope will give you my address. Be there at eight,” I tell Buck as I turn toward the office door. Before he can respond, I’m heading down the hall feeling relieved.
I enter the stage just as the voice from the booth booms, “THIRTY SECONDS!”
I hustle over to Renee and ask, “Everything okay with you?” to which she answers, “Why wouldn’t it be?” while looking at me as if I just landed in a spaceship. Gee…maybe because it never has been in the history of this mindless show? “Just checking,” I say smiling like an idiot and walking away, simultaneously relieved that she wasn’t having a meltdown while I was upstairs, offended that I wasn’t desperately needed, and generally sickened about Buck’s visit to my office and his impending visit to my home.
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